Of the many differences between Matthew Yglesias and President Bush, the latest to come to light is Yglesias’s apparent willingness to admit a mistake. In a thoughtful post, Matt this morning offers a mea culpa for his grudging support last year for an invasion of Iraq. He blames vanity: To say that “Bush is right to say we should invade Iraq, but he’s going about it the wrong way, here is my nuanced wonderfulness'” just “sounds much more intelligent than some kind of chant at an anti-war rally,” he writes ruefully. “In fact, however, it was less intelligent.” Yglesias suggests that the war might not have happened had “the bloggers and the journalists and hawkish Clinton administration veterans,” and “the regular folks who had similar opinions” not backed it. Neal Pollack might argue that Matt is over-estimating the ability of his own “block of opinion” to affect policy.
But Atrios agrees with Yglesias: “The fact that a lot of center-left types … took the pro-war position provided the pro-war media an easy excuse to completely marginalize all anti-war opinion.” Atrios singles out the “former generals” for special criticism, and, curiously, suggests what he thinks Gen. Wesley Clark should have done at the time: “Screw being a CNN analyst! Quit your job and travel around the country trying to convince people that this is a really really bad idea.” But it’s far from clear that that’s how Clark actually felt at the time.
The early fallout over Bob Woodward’s new book, “Plan of Attack,” about the president’s decision to invade Iraq, is another hot (or at least lukewarm) topic in the blogosphere. At National Review’s “The Corner,” Kathryn-Jean Lopez asks, “Why does the president sit down with Bob Woodward in the first place? We have, evidently, in the Woodward book, based on ’60 Minutes’ and Post excerpts, a portrait of a simple-minded Christian who thinks he was sent by God to give the whole world freedom, and who doesn’t consider himself accountable to Congress, the Constitution, or anyone else.”
One theory floating around is that the president was expecting that Woodward would be as gentle with him as he was in his 2002 account, “Bush at War.” But Jonah Goldberg has a different answer. If Bush had snubbed him, Goldberg argues, Woodward would have had “ever[y] incentive and few other choices but to lean more heavily on those who speak negatively about the President.” (Only the president knows his own logic, of course, but we can’t help noting that concerns of that sort haven’t stopped Bush from stonewalling most of the press most of the time.)
In other news, John Kerry, as we’ve noted elsewhere, did his own pretty big interview yesterday. Mickey Kaus points to some of Kerry’s comments to Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday as evidence that the presumptive Democratic nominee supports “a modified version of means-testing” for Social Security, something that’s traditionally been anathema to Democrats. Asks Kaus: “Will he be forced to pathetically backtrack? My money says yes … But maybe Kerry’s deliberately taking a controversial stand to show there’s at least one issue on which he won’t flip flop under fire.”
And finally, we knew it wouldn’t be long before someone suggested that the man responsible for pulling Air America off the air in Chicago, Multicultural Radio Broadcasting CEO Arthur Liu, is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi (via Wonkette, fresh off her New York Times profile – you go girl!) is first to the ball. Trippi writes ominously that “Liu, a Republican supporter, retained the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — a firm that lists Ken Starr and Ted Olsen as its alumni.”
Wonkette disagrees: “Air America should fail because it sucks, not because of some shadowy conservative cabal is [sic, Times profile or not!] pulling strings!”
–Zachary Roth
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.